


Your Will In My Hand

by Sparcck



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016-2017 NHL Season, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Dom/sub, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Orgasm Control, Pining, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Processing This Season and How Bittersweet I Feel About It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-17 13:22:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparcck/pseuds/Sparcck
Summary: Geno puts his hand on the back of Sidney’s neck, gently, without real pressure and Sidney can feel everything in him slowly folding.He looks up, his pulse beating hard in his throat. “Take me home before I get on my knees in the fucking parking lot.”Geno’s smile is, as always, best when it’s for Sidney.It takes the whole season, but Sidney finally learns to let go.





	Your Will In My Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kleinergruenerkaktus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleinergruenerkaktus/gifts).



> 2016-17 has been a joyous and heart-breaking year to be a Penguins fan. Kleinergruenerkaktus, I hope I hit enough of what you wanted here -- I've never written D/s like this before, but it's something that's been kicking around my head and the ups and downs of this year seemed to be the perfect time to set it against.
> 
> As such, though, be warned that this is essentially the entire year, so it deals with a lot of injuries and a pretty detailed description of Sid's concussion. It's the first half of May, if you might find that hard to read.
> 
> Also, this somehow turned into a long goodbye to Marc-Andre Fleury, as I suspect a lot of these might this year. I wasn't sure how to do it any other way. <3
> 
> Thank you so much to [koncupiscence](http://archiveofourown.org/users/koncupiscence), as usual, for the beta, the hand-holding, the all-capsing, and one of the most fun and emotional years of fandom I've ever gone through. Thanks for sharing this with me. I hope this can be a catharsis for both of us.

**November**

By the time they’re back in the dressing room and done with media and pictures and a thousand back slaps, Jake is wired.

Sidney can tell he’s not sure how he’s supposed to act: his first appearance in the show, two goals scored, his family there to see him…but they lost. He looks across the room to Flower, who had smashed his stick against the door of the dressing room, but is now sitting stonily, out of his pads and shirtless, Tanger kneeling in front of him to unlace his skates and murmuring quietly to him in French.

It’s his fourth loss this month, in the four games he’s played.

Meanwhile, Murr tries to stay out of the way, folds himself into his stall and hunches out of his pads, gets some furtive back slaps from Rusty and Conor. He and Flower know what the other needs after losses, and they’ll link up before they head home. But Sidney knows it’s only going to get worse from here; the tandem situation is wearing both of them down.

But that’s not what he needs to worry about now. Tanger has got Flower covered, though Sidney’s not totally sure who’s actually taking charge. He’s never quite understood his and Flower’s arrangement and neither one of them has ever felt the need to explain it.

He’s one to talk, anyway.

Geno, like he’s been psychically summoned, catches Sidney’s eye and tips his chin up questioningly.

Yes, Sidney wants to say, suddenly and overwhelmingly, _yes._ But Jake’s hands had shook as he unwound the tape from his socks and his adrenaline-dumb fingers had fumbled on his skate laces and Sidney has responsibilities, responsibilities he asked for, that he cares about getting right. He’s got time booked before practice tomorrow with Conor and Rusty, but Jake is here, now, and he has to make a decision.

He shakes his head and Geno narrows his eyes for a second, tongue worrying his bottom lip; he breaks eye contact when he pulls off his shirt and then it’s like nothing happened. He stands and heads to the showers, accepting an aggressive ass slap from Horny, who’s in his game day suit but was cleared by the doctors to be there.

Fucking concussions. Fucking Washington.

“Guentz,” he says when’s Jake’s down to his Under Armor, and Jake’s head whips around. Sidney cocks his head and smiles. “Okay?”

Jakes blows out a shaky breath and lets himself smile a little. “I think?”

Sidney nods, he knows that feeling. They haven’t talked yet; Sidney hasn’t officially offered anything and he doesn’t want Jake to feel obligated, but his gut knows the look on Jake’s face, the tension in his body. After tonight he knows Jake’s not gonna be sent back down, and though he doesn’t often do this in the locker room in front of everyone, he wants Jake to know that everyone knows Sidney’s taking him on.

He nods at the floor in front of him, his eyebrows raised in an offer, and Jake’s smile tips towards relieved as he scrambles to kneel at Sidney’s feet.

Around them, voices die down for a second, before starting back up.

Sidney looks down at Jake’s honey blond head and reaches out to smooth his palm through the sweaty curls at his nape, bowing his head further. “You’re gonna be here awhile, okay, bud?”

Jake’s breath hitches and Sidney knows he’s not sure what to do, if he’s allowed to speak.

“Just breathe,” Sidney says, letting a half-laugh color his voice, “close your eyes,” and he lets his hand stay on the back of Jake’s neck, not moving, just to remind Jake that he’s here.

Jake's breath hitches again and his body folds forward, his forehead coming to rest on the point of Sidney’s knee. His shoulders shake for a long time and Sidney regulates his own breathing, hoping Jake will pick it up.

When he does, the room is cleared out and Sidney’s cycled through every moment of Jake on the ice twice — he’ll check the stats later, but he’s gotta have logged at least 12 minutes. Sidney lets his hand slide onto Jake’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze, and clears his throat. “Okay. Come on back.”

Jake lifts his head and his eyes are wet and soft, his cheeks pink and splotchy. But he looks calm, his shoulders loose, and he takes a deep, shuddery breath.

He tries to stand and stumbles. Sidney catches him and drags them both upright.

Jake laughs breathlessly, his thighs shaking. “Whoa.”

“Yeah, the first time can be a lot. Wait until you have to wake up twice to eat tonight.”

Jake blinks. “Really?”

Sidney slaps him on the back. “I’ve got the other guys tomorrow morning before practice, but let’s grab lunch after.”

Jake nods but he looks soft around the eyes still, so Sidney pushes him gently into Sidney’s own stall. “Sit. I’ll shower quick then it’s all yours.” He never wants anyone to mistake this for a sex thing, which he knows can get confusing fast for some guys. And on some teams it’s routine, encouraged, but not this one. It’s not discouraged, really, he knows it happens (Suspects it’s happening with Tanger and Flower; he’d never ask and they’ve never said, but for as much as their actual arrangement is a puzzle, their affection for each other isn’t), but it doesn’t happen with Sidney.

He speeds through his shower and gets into his clothes while Jake strips slowly. Sidney doesn’t look, but Jake stops in front of him.

“I won’t drown in there, I promise.”

Sidney laughs. “Thank god. We’re gonna need you, eh?”

Jake’s entire body blushes and he nods and slips away into the shower.

Outside, Sidney can see his breath in the air and he’s suddenly exhausted, down to his bones. It’s only fucking November, how can he be this tired already? He knows it’s expected, the short summer, the injuries they’re already racking up, how top heavy the season has been.

The concussion.

He swerves hard around that thought — and pulls up short when he sees Geno leaning against his car.

He clicks the doors unlocked and sighs. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow, G. It’s why I didn’t ask you to wait.”

Geno doesn’t move when he grabs the door handle. “No. You don’t ask me to wait so you can take care of rookie. Put yourself last, Sid, always.”

Sidney digs his heels in, an itch under this skin he can’t quite define. “What about Anna?”

“Anna suggest when I call after game. She say it’s been too long.” Geno shrugs. “She smart about these things.”

Anna has a girl in Miami, Sidney knows, that she’s been taking care of for years, since before she met Geno; that easy trust is the only thing Sidney’s ever felt a stab of jealousy over, wishing he could be a part of it, too.

Geno puts his hand on the back of Sidney’s neck, gently, without real pressure and Sidney can feel everything in him slowly folding.

He looks up, his pulse beating hard in his throat. “Take me home before I get on my knees in the fucking parking lot.”

Geno’s smile is, as always, best when it’s for Sidney.

  


#

  


Sidney’s been dumb for Geno for what feels like forever. He doesn’t like to think of the hours of his life he spent watching tape of Geno’s lanky body dangling literal circles around the collective KHL, his big, soft hands and fleeting sly smile making Sidney desperate to kneel before he even really knew what that meant.

But no one thought he needed to kneel, really. He was supposed to pull the franchise out of the shitter: they let him have his rookie season, then they gave him the A, then they asked him to take on Jordan Staal where they both fumbled through their roles until Sidney settled in — if there’s something he can understand, it’s being a high draft pick with hockey-family expectations— then he finally accepted the C, and by then the idea of kneeling felt so far outside the realm of reality that Sidney stopped thinking about it.

They lost and they lost and then they fucking won and when Sidney hoisted the Cup over his head on the ice for the first time he felt like his skin would split from the force of his joy — it was enormous and riding the line of his ability to control it, and after he handed the Cup off to Billy, when his hands didn’t have something to anchor him, he felt it slip away from him. His blood pumped pure euphoria, cutting off his breath and dumbing his nervous system. His knee didn’t hurt anymore, didn’t feel like anything at all and he looked up at the rafters and felt like he could actually leave his body, just project himself up to hang next to the Cup banners.

And suddenly Geno was there, his huge hand cupping his face, tilting his gaze back to earth, and then his arms were around him and his mouth was against Sidney’s temple, his cheekbone: Geno who had been a constant presence by Sidney’s side since the day he landed in Pittsburgh, who had fought for him and stood at the ready the first time Sidney fought, Geno with the Art Ross and the Conn Smythe and his quick smile and bright anger and bottomless passion.

Sidney’s knees buckled.

Geno held him upright. “I know,” he rumbled in Sidney’s ear, “Later.” And if Sidney hadn’t had his skates firmly back under him he would have gone down.

Then Kuni crashed into them followed by Tanger and Flower, all of them yelling incoherently, and Sidney felt himself snap back into place.

It was easy to box the moment up and put it away because the next 24 hours were a blur of drinking and packing and drinking and flying home and he thinks he slept somewhere in there, in the car on the way back from the airport, waking up with a sleep hangover and when he staggered out of the car at Mario’s there was already a server with a tray of champagne so that helped.

So he didn’t wonder about “later” until “later” was suddenly happening: Sidney, stripped to his boxers and soaking wet from a swim with the Cup, pouring beer from the keg when Max appeared and smacked the solo cup from his hand.

“House rules!” he shouted, drawing a crowd, “If 87 wants a drink he needs to drink from the Cup!”

“Talbo,” Sidney laughed even though no one could hear him over the answering cheers from the roughly 700 people packed into Mario’s backyard.

“Ah, voila!” Max’s face lit up and he made a shooing gesture over Sidney’s shoulder. “Allez, laissez-le passer!”

Sidney turned and there was Geno parting the crowd, Cup held over his head. A hot flush swept down Sidney’s chest and settled in his belly.

Geno lifted his chin at him, rolling his lower lip under his tongue.

Sidney didn’t look away as he raised his hands in surrender; a cheer went up and Max cleared more room around the keg but Geno just grinned at Sidney, his slow, secret smirk, the one that said he knew what Sidney was thinking.

Geno tilted the cup under one of the keg’s hoses and Max poured what looked like probably three beers’ worth in. Then he turned and held it out to Sidney at hip-height: half-offer and half-challenge.

Sidney blew out a breath and, his insides hot and shivery and liquid, went to his knees.

Everyone laughed and someone popped another bottle of champagne. The slate tile bit into his kneecaps. A chorus of “chug chug chug” started somewhere near the pool.

He looked up and up and up until he met Geno’s eyes, dark and hot in his flushed face. He deliberately put his hands on his knees instead of on the Cup and Geno’s mouth drooped open, his breath seeming to shudder out of him.

Sidney leaned forward and put his mouth to metal. He closed his eyes and drank as much as he could, letting Geno dictate the pace, beer sloshing over his chin and chest and raising goosebumps all over his overheated skin.

When Geno finally tilted it away, another cheer going up, Sidney was gasping for air.

He met Geno’s eyes over the rim of the Cup and waited, his hands slack on his thighs.

Geno’s eyes glittered behind half-shuttered lids and the moment stretched and Sidney wondered how long Geno would keep him here, how long he could hold out, voices a dim buzz, cool slate under him, Geno holding him there, and holding him and holding him.

Then Geno nodded, a slight movement, and Sidney’s mind snapped back from wherever he had gone.

Oh _. Oh_.

He hunched over, realizing he was half-hard and half-naked, and put out a hand to push himself up. He couldn’t quite get his feet under him and Max caught him as he staggered, snickering and oblivious, and gave him a glove-less face wash. “All right, Cap, all right.”

Sidney glared and Max laughed more and flipped him a can of Molson. “For your troubles, mon petit chou. One freebie. But I’m telling everyone else it’s the Cup or nothing.”

Sidney flipped him off and pressed the can to the back of his neck.

At a nearby table where a game of beer pong was underway, Flower was staring at him with his thick eyebrows hiked up until they were almost touching the strap of his backwards snapback.

“ _What_?” Sidney snapped, in French.

Flower raised his hands. “ _I didn’t say anything_.”

Sidney flicked his eyes towards a lounge chair, where Vero was all but poured into Tanger’s lap with her head tipped onto his shoulder while he combed his fingers through her hair. She caught Sidney looking and her smile was just on the other side of blissed out. “ _Well then I won’t, either_.”

Flower turned to follow his gaze and a smug smirk tugged his mouth to the left. “ _You could. I don’t mind_.”

“ _Hey, dummy_ ,” Duper knocked Flower’s cap down over his eyes. “ _It’s our turn! Stop harassing him_.”

Flower put his hand over his heart, offended. “ _I would never_.”

"English!" Tyler yelled. "You're cheating somehow!"

Flower shrugged, grinned full force at Sidney and tossed the ping pong ball without looking; it landed in the centermost cup.

Sidney managed to back away while Tyler knocked over the cups yelling about Sidney somehow helping them and poor Lovejoy tried to settle him down as Flower laughed his ass off.

He looked back at Vero and Tanger, who had their heads together and were laughing quietly, both of them looking at Flower like he hung the moon.

He wrenched his gaze away and landed on Geno, who was looking right at him from next to the keg, like he had been waiting.

Sidney felt his heart go sideways in his chest.

“Sid,” Geno said, and Sidney found himself reeled in by the quiet command in his voice, softness over steel.

Sidney got so close he could feel the heat of Geno’s skin against his bare chest and looked up into Geno’s face. He thought maybe he was supposed to look down, or wait until Geno asked, but he’d spent this long bending the rules his way so he wasn’t going to stop now.

“Have to say,” Geno murmured, taking a long pull from a solo cup that smelled like it was filled with jet fuel, “if this what you want.”

Sidney swallowed hard and lifted his chin a little higher. “Yes.”

Geno didn’t say anything for a long moment.

Sidney cleared his throat where it felt like his heart had gotten stuck, and the party pressed in around them. “ _Please_.”

Geno smiled. “Of course.”

Sidney didn’t shift on his feet. “Now, or?”

“Do you need now?”

“No,” Sidney said after a moment.

“Don’t worry, you tell me when you need, and I’m here.” Geno cupped Sidney’s face in his hands and Sidney, for once, didn’t look around to see who might be watching. “But sometimes,” he continued, and leaned close and kissed Sidney’s left cheek, then his right, his chapped lips scraping Sidney’s overheated, oversensitive skin. “Sometimes I’m just know.”

Then he stepped back and the party got loud again, the crush of bodies around them reminding Sidney suddenly of where they were.

Geno smiled and nudged the Cup into Sidney’s leg before turning and raising his hand to Gonch and the group of Russians that had congregated near the shallow end of the pool, then slipping away to join them.

Sidney looked down at the Cup and felt a goofy smile that he couldn’t help spread across his face. But he figured he earned it.

That night he hauled the Cup up to his room and collapsed with it into bed, the metal body-warm against him under the covers. He dreamt of kneeling for it, kneeling for Geno, Geno’s big, soft hands on him, Geno’s mouth, Geno’s body; everything Sidney had been trying to ignore since he first laid eyes on him.

He woke before dawn with a raging hard on and he waffled for two seconds before deciding fuck it and he jacked off staring at the rim of the Cup where he had put his mouth the night before and came with his eyes helplessly screwed shut and imagining Geno telling him to and then lay there sweaty and sticky and _relieved_ , and he figured he couldn’t have all the stuff he had tamped down but he had the Cup and he had gotten on his knees and would again and that was more than enough.

And it was, for seven years.

Sidney compartmentalized. Kneeling for Geno was a part of his self-care routine, like massage therapy or getting in the ice bath. And as much as Sidney thought about it, it never crossed into something more; when he felt himself crowding the line he took some time away. It was important: he and Geno had always been friends but after that night with the Cup, Sidney couldn’t imagine his life without him. Getting closer to Geno was something Sidney hoarded deep inside himself and he didn’t want to lose it.

So Sidney dated and Geno dated and Sidney learned a little Russian and Geno’s English got better and Sidney got hooked on Russian soap operas and kicked Geno's ass at Mario Kart and Geno devoured Sidney’s collection of LeCarre and crushed Sidney at poker and they lost and they won and then lost again and Geno got married and had a baby and they won another Cup and through it all Geno put Sidney on his knees whenever he needed it and it was enough.

Until it’s not anymore.

#

  


When Sidney gets home, Geno’s already there, leaning against the still-pinging hood of his car as he scrolls through something on his phone, a smirk tugging up the corner of his mouth. They don’t go to Geno and Anna on game days since they woke up the baby and Anna threatened to divorce them both which Sidney laughed nervously at.

It hit a little too close to home, to a thing Sidney didn’t let himself think about.

“Nealer,” Geno says, tapping out a message as they walk to the front door. “Betting me he wins Cup this year.”

“Doesn’t he already owe you a thousand from last year?”

Geno’s smirk turns into a wolfish grin as he slips his phone in his pocket. “Triple or nothing.”

Sidney laughs despite himself, delighted by the way Geno’s grin doesn’t dim when he lets his eyes slide down Sidney’s body. “You’re terrible.”

“I’m hungry,” he says and crowds Sidney against the door as Sidney tries to get his key in the lock.

He has to try twice before the key goes in: he’s practically vibrating, his skin tight and hot and he can feel a flush creeping up his hairline at his nape that he knows Geno can see in the warm glow of his porch light.

“No more bets,” Sid says, his voice catching, and Geno, the asshole, laughs.

“I won’t jinx us,” he says, toeing off his shoes and shrugging out of his overcoat.

Sidney rolls his eyes but doesn’t reply, unbuttoning his dress shirt and heading to the kitchen to get glasses for the recovery smoothies Horny got them all hooked on. He’s not hungry, but he knows he needs to get something into him or he’ll feel like shit tomorrow.

“Sid.”

Geno is framed in the doorway, backlit in the dim porch light filtering through the transom. His broad shoulders fill the frame, looking even bigger when he’s wearing a vest, and Sidney swallows hard.

He takes Sidney’s shirt from his hands and drapes it over a stool at the breakfast bar, and Sidney feels oddly over and underdressed in his undershirt and dress slacks with Geno so close still in his full suit. Geno nods his chin in the direction of the couch. “Go.”

“We need to eat,” Sidney says, backing down the step from the kitchen to the great room and this time Geno rolls his eyes.

“I need you on your knees,” he says, slow and deliberate, and cuts in front of him to snag a couch pillow.

“Shouldn’t we change?” And now Sidney knows he’s needling Geno, but he can’t help it, feels a weird little thrill go through him at the way Geno pulls himself up taller.

Geno throws the pillow on the floor. “So much backtalk tonight. Maybe it’s longer than I think, maybe you forget how this goes?”

Heat rolls through Sidney’s gut. “No. I remember.”

“We see.” Geno licks his lower lip and nods at the pillow and Sidney folds slowly down, his hands going behind his back. He looks down between his spread knees, his eyes following the pattern in the rug, his heart pounding. Geno usually sits before Sidney kneels, lounging on the couch with his long legs sprawled open, but this time he stays standing.

Sidney’s dick twitches at the height difference, Geno’s solid bulk towering over him. He loves when Geno’s in one of these moods, loves pushing him into it every now and then, Geno exasperated with Sidney, long-suffering with his duty to remind Sidney to take care of himself. His insides squirm because it’s times like these that Sidney allows himself to imagine they might cross the line Sidney promised himself he’d never let them cross.

He’s not sure why he’s doing it tonight; maybe it’s because it was Jake’s first time, and it made Sidney think of his first time kneeling, his first time with Geno, years of possibility that Sidney had let himself consider for one night.

Geno hm’s, skims a broad hand along the line of Sidney’s shoulders, nudging him straighter. He lets his palm rest on the cap of Sidney’s shoulder, pulling it back so his chest opens up and his lower back arches before Sidney pulls his abs in tight to compensate.

“Good, Sid,” Geno rumbles and from his vantage point Sidney can actually see his own dick jump against the front of his slacks.

He feels revved up, overheated, and Geno laughs deep in his chest.

“ _Good_ ,” he says again, in Russian this time, and Sid realizes suddenly that this is exactly how Geno wants him to feel, turned on and hyper aware of every single muscle in his body, his abs and quads shaking with the effort of keeping his ass off his heels.

He closes his eyes, holds there for 20 seconds, 30, and everything in him turns inward, the feeling of his muscles wrapping around his bones, his blood pumping oxygen into his overtired muscles, his cock straining, thick and heavy between his thighs. He breathes and breathes and breathes through it and he makes an involuntary noise, low and wounded, when Geno slides a hand into the hair at the crown at Sidney’s head.

“ _You’re so good_ ,” Geno says, still in Russian, his voice indicating he’s sitting in front of Sidney now. Sidney can understand it easily when he feels like this, no overthinking, Geno’s words going straight from his mouth into Sidney’s brain. “ _So good for me when I ask you to be. Why can’t you be better to yourself?_ ”

Sidney knows it’s not an invitation to speak and he’s grateful: he doesn’t know the answer, though he feels like he’s coming closer to it. Instead he puts all his effort into exhaling and tucking his hips up hard, as hard as he can.

“What you want, Sid?”

Sidney clenches his teeth and shakes his head a little, unable to speak. It’s been too long, over a minute now, and his body is screaming to sit back, but he knows Geno won’t let him go further than he’s able.

“It’s okay, I know. You know I know.” Something soft gets shoved between Sidney and the couch and Sidney opens his eyes to see another pillow.

“G,” he gasps and he wants so badly, needs to come, needs to come _right now_. But it would cross the line, though he’s starting to realize he might be the only one who knows where the line is, the only one who knows there’s a line at all.

Geno touches his shoulder and Sidney _can’t,_ he breaks, pitching forward hard, his cock snug into the pillow, his face against the inside of Geno’s knee.

He hitches his cock hard against the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut, turning his face into the soft fabric of Geno’s slacks, trying to muffle the noises he can’t help making.

“How long?” Geno says gently, and Sidney’s not sure if he means _how long have you wanted this_ or _how long can you hold out_ so Sidney breathes out hard, tries to pace himself, tries not to think about how long he’s wanted this, just this, to be stripped down in front of Geno, to put himself, all of himself, in Geno’s hands.

His orgasm is right there and Sidney screws his hips in tight, desperate circles, gritting his teeth, trying to hold it at bay, but it’s _right there_ , please, please, _please._

“Let go,” Geno says, “It’s okay.”

Sidney gasps into Geno’s thigh, and it’s suddenly on him, breaking over him and dragging him under as he comes and comes and comes, harder than he thinks he ever has.

His hips push up a few more times, his entire body shaking and out of his control, milking the last of his orgasm out of him, and then Geno’s hand sinks into his hair again, stroking over and over the nape of his neck, stilling him.

“So good, Sid,” Geno murmurs as Sidney struggles to catch his breath. “You do great.”

Sidney turns his face, not so subtly wiping his wet eyes on Geno’s thigh. “ _Fuck_ ,” he sighs, “I don’t think I can stand.”

“So don’t.” Geno gently extricates himself. “Be right back.”

Sidney loses track of time a little, his mind spooling out, thinking about nothing but his heartbeat, the sound of the blender, the tap running, what’s maybe the zipper on Sidney’s hockey bag.

When Geno comes back, he crouches next to Sidney and smoothes a hand down his back. “Up on the couch, yes?”

Sidney opens his eyes, not realizing he’d closed them. “Okay.”

Geno takes most of his weight, muscles him onto the couch, then kneels in front of him. Sidney’s never seen this view before, and it makes his heart squeeze strangely in his chest. “Geno, what—“

“I tell you, too much backtalk. Here,” he presses the glass into Sidney’s hand and his fingers go to Sidney’s fly.

Sidney just stares, lets himself be manhandled as Geno unbuttons his slacks and urges his hips up to pull them and his ruined briefs down his legs. Then he wipes Sidney down with a warm washcloth, gently, murmuring softly in Russian when Sidney hisses at the overstimulation.

He slides a clean pair of briefs up Sidney’s calves, and follows them up, sitting next to him when he’s satisfied that Sidney is comfortable. “Drink,” he says, arching an eyebrow at the glass in Sidney’s hand.

Sidney does, and when he’s done he feels full and satisfied and like he could sleep right here. Geno takes the glass from him and urges Sidney’s head onto his shoulder. Sidney doesn’t put up a battle, doesn’t want to. They’re already so far over the line that he’s completely lost, so he just follows Geno’s lead.

He drifts as Geno strokes a rhythmic hand down his arm until the world shifts under him, and then he’s laying down, the couch cool under his overheated face. He opens his eyes to see Geno hovering over him.

“You want sleep here?”

“S’fine,” Sidney slurs. His couch is huge and expensive and comfortable and one night on it won’t kill him.

Geno hums and kisses one cheek, then the other, then hesitates for a moment.

“G,” Sidney says, his eyes drifting closed again, and then Geno’s mouth is on his, just for a moment, warm and soft and dry, gone before Sidney can marshall the energy to kiss back.

It feels like a dream so Sidney lets it be, not thinking about the talk they need to have, the talk they probably should have had seven years ago but never got around to.

It’s okay. One night on the couch, one night ignoring the real world. He can be selfish tonight because Geno said it was okay, Geno showed him it was okay, and Geno’s never steered him wrong, not in ten years. Tomorrow will be tomorrow, but tonight is still just this, just them.

“Night, Sid,” Geno says, and Sidney’s asleep before he even hears the door close.

He doesn’t dream. It’s enough for now.

  


#

****  


**December**

He and Geno don’t talk about it, by some unspoken mutual agreement, so Sidney tries not to think about it. He mostly succeeds, though it ends up translating into him taking it out on the guys at practice, a fact that isn’t lost on particular members of the team when Sidney sets his sights on them.

At practice between their games against Florida and Tampa Bay, Sidney gets it in his head that it’s rebounds they need to work on, and he asks Flower to hang back and help him out. After Sidney’s third attempt at shoveling a rebound past him, Flower sprawls out and puts his glove over the puck and trills like a ref’s whistle. Sidney shoves at him a little, see if he can jiggle the puck loose, and Flower grabs his stick and swears in French. “Play between the whistles, asshole,” he says, trying to yank Sidney off balance.

Sidney lets go, sending Flower toppling backwards onto his ass and from where they’ve been loitering on the bench to watch, Conor, Rusty, and Murr laugh and laugh.

Flower sits up, breathing hard, and flips them the idea of the bird from behind his blocker. “I feel like the kids don’t respect us like they used to.”

“When was that?” Sidney asks wryly, under no illusions that whatever passed as respect towards him was probably more like fear of his weird brand of fame and all the oddities it’s allowed him to nurse over the years.

Flower rolls his eyes behind his mask. “Sidney Crosby, the most humble man in sports,” he says, pushing himself up and shoving his mask on top of his head. “Can we stop now?”

“We could run a few more, focus on controlling rebounds instead?”

Flower laughs and slashes gently at Sidney’s shins with his stick. “Oh, was this for me? I thought this was one of your sessions where you…hm,” he wrinkles his mouth inward like he does when he’s looking for an idiom, “work out your demons?”

Sidney sucks on his lower lip with a pop. “Exorcise.”

“Hm,” Flower says again, arching an eyebrow and grabbing his water bottle. “Come on, fearless leader. Let’s get tacos and you can tell me all about it.”

“Yes to tacos,” Sidney says. The whole point is to _not_ think about it.

Flower heaves a long-suffering sigh. “ _Fine._ Children!” he calls to the bench, “Tacos?”

But all in all, early December is great — they have a seven-game winning streak, Sidney has two sessions each with Conor and Rusty, once alone and once tandem, and one with Jake, and they’re all three settling in, finding their stride. The whole team is, really.

Sidney wonders how much of it is him, and how settled he feels. He’s been riding the high of his last session with Geno for two weeks, promising himself every night that it would be the last time he jerks off thinking about it, but it makes him feel centered, and now it’s become a ritual.

Geno watches him after every game, and Sidney thinks his gaze is a little sharper, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make any offers and Sidney doesn’t ask.

They go out after Murr shuts out Arizona, and Sidney wonders if something will happen tonight, his skin starting to feel buzzy, a strange blend of anxiety and anticipation churning in his belly. Horny and Phil make him do shots and he does three in a row, three more than he’d usually do, to try to combat it.

He tries to catch Geno’s eye, but he and Flower have been sequestered at a booth for a half hour.

“Business,” Cully says, clapping Sidney on the back as he fails to not glare in their general direction. “Leave them to it.”

It’s not the first time that Sidney has felt out of the loop, but he does consider pushing it this time.

Geno throws his head back at the face Flower is currently making and laughs his deep, booming laugh, and Sidney snaps his mouth shut. He doesn’t have to be in the loop all the time, he supposes. It’s probably better if he isn’t.

Cully laughs, too. “Attaway, 87.”

The buzzy feeling doesn’t go away, and four days later they lose to LA, a 1-0 shutout that makes Sidney’s gut churn.

Then Tanger gets hurt, knocked off his feet and into the boards by fucking Backes, _asshole_ , and takes a second to get up again. Sidney looks down the bench and Flower’s face is stone, his mouth pressed flat and expressionless.

They both know it’s bad. Tanger finishes the game, but when he’s not in the dressing room afterwards, Sidney’s fears are confirmed.

“Happens, Sid,” Geno says later, when Sidney again finds him leaning against his Range Rover.

“I don’t think I can tonight, G,” Sidney lies.

Geno looks at him calculatingly, and Sidney swallows hard. The silence stretches out and then Geno shrugs. “Is okay for me.” He cups his palm around Sidney’s chin, presses his thumb against Sidney’s suddenly dry mouth. Then he steps back. “See you tomorrow.”

Sidney breathes out hard, licks his lips and imagines he can taste the salt from Geno’s thumb there. “You—" he stops himself. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Geno’s coat flaps behind him as he walks to his stupidly tiny car and Sidney doesn’t call him back.

He spends the drive home working himself up into a full on Mood. This is what Geno wants, he tells himself, he wants Sidney thinking about it, he wants Sidney to beg him, he wants Sidney to break; he’s done it before himself, with the rookies, made them wait and wait until they finally came to him for help.

Sidney won’t break.

Back home he thinks about making a smoothie but instead spitefully microwaves a frozen pizza and angrily watches the news. He’s boiling over, the crawling anxiety he’s been feeling for days pressing up against his skin from the inside.

He’s stuffs his phone into the couch cushions after he clicks the home screen on four times in two minutes. He won’t break.

He clicks into his texts and clicks on Geno’s name and stares at the last text Geno sent him (two days ago, a link to his bye week itinerary in a last ditch effort to convince him to come to Miami instead of Vail), squinting at it like that will make a new text appear.

 **Fine** , he types and stabs send.

The typing bubbles come up immediately, then disappear. Sidney waits, but nothing comes through.

He gives it ten minutes, a herculean effort he finally admits to himself, changing into sweatpants and a threadbare Steelers t-shirt, then sits on the edge of his bed and calls Geno.

Geno picks up on the third ring. “Sid,” he says, and just that one word is threaded through with so much innuendo, somehow, a sly tease, that arousal curls immediately through Sidney’s belly, making him squirm.

Sidney’s voice sounds breathless even to him when he says, “Is this what you wanted?”

“This what _you_ wanted, no?”

Sidney doesn’t know how to answer that, and his mouth opens and closes helplessly before Geno takes pity on him.

“Hang on.” And then sound is muffled as he speaks in low Russian to who Sidney assumes is Anna.

His face flames. Anna. Jesus. They really have not talked about this.

“Geno,” he says and there’s a scrape as Geno’s hand comes away from the mic. “You’re at home, this isn’t—“

“Shut,” Geno snaps and Sidney clicks his mouth shut hard; there’s a rustling on Geno’s end, and then a door closes. “Strip.”

Sidney laughs nervously. “G—“

“How long we do this, Sid? Seven years?”

Anger curls through Sidney’s gut, fills his mouth with the taste of pennies. “This is different.”

Geno makes a scoffing noise. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Fucking— of course it’s different! You’re…we’re…”

“You feel different?”

Sidney feels like he’s been running an uphill mile, and he huffs into his phone, not sure how to answer.

“So,” Geno says, low now, his voice overlaid with steel, “strip.”

Sidney scrambles to obey, his shaking hands folding his ratty t-shirt carefully before sliding his sweats and briefs off, looking at them dumbly, feeling strange and exposed in his own bedroom, the cool air pulling his nipples tight, raising goosebumps over his chest and belly.

“Fold them,” Geno says, laughing at him, but it makes Sidney feel less foolish, and he does, stacking everything on the chair in the corner. “Then on the bed. Kneel.”

They’ve never done this, not in seven years, and Sidney wants to poke him, wants to point out how different things are, but he bites his tongue, wanting more to see where this goes.

“Touch yourself,” Geno says, and for as straightforward as it is, it sounds _filthy_ , since he’s never heard Geno say anything like that before, at least not towards him.

Sidney does, biting off a soft noise when he pushes his foreskin back and then over the head of his dick, going from half-hard to rock hard so fast he feels light-headed.

“No,” Geno says, “let me hear you.”

Sidney’s cheeks burn as he lets out an involuntary moan, twisting his palm over his cockhead.

“ _So good,_ Sid. Have you ever thought about this?” Geno murmurs now, though Sidney can barely hear him over his own harsh breathing. “You can say.”

“Y-yeah,” Sidney blurts, before he can convince himself not to. “Thought about you watching me.”

Geno hm’s.

“After the last time,” Sidney gasps, “I thought about you watching me and not letting me come. Not until—“ he breaks off, having to breathe out hard as his dick jerks out pre-come.

“Until you beg, yes?” Geno all but croons this into the phone.

“Ye-yes, fuck, _Geno_.”

“Not yet, Sid, be good for me, _be so good for me_.”

Sidney’s balls draw up tight as though on command and he’s incoherent now, thinking about Geno’s dark eyes on him, maybe even Geno’s hand on him, Geno hard, too, and maybe Geno would let him touch him, maybe Geno would let him taste him— “Please,” he says, his voice wobbling as he struggles to keep his orgasm at bay. “Geno I need—“

“Yes,” Geno hisses and Sidney moans low in his throat as he comes.

Geno is breathing just as heavily and Sidney has to wait until his heart leaves his throat to speak. “ _Fuck.”_

“ _Good boy,_ ” Geno replies.

Sidney thought it would sound silly, but instead it takes his brain offline and he says, “Oh,” and Geno makes a smug noise.

“See you tomorrow, Sid,” he says and Sidney nods instead of replying, falling back on the bed when the call drops.

Next time, he hopes Geno will come, too.

Then he wonders if he should be freaking out more at the thought of a next time, but instead he closes his eyes and is asleep before he can revisit it.

  


#

****  


**January**

At the end of December, they lose Murr and Dales and he can see worry etched on the rookies’ faces. They’re new, he keeps reminding himself, they don’t know how bad it can get. Though this feels as bad as it’s ever been, so Sidney reminds himself that he had a weird start to the year with the concussion (he still feels sick even thinking about it, shaky and numb in his hands and feet) and the looming trade deadline that everyone is doing their level best to pretend isn’t coming.

On New Year’s Eve, he idly watches Flower strap on his pads, laughing as Horny stands over him shouting at him in his mish-mash of Swedish and English. Sidney catches the word “beauty” and “fuck” about seven times.

Tanger, finally back after seven games, sits quietly next to Flower, tapping at something on his phone.

The bye week can’t come soon enough, as far as Sidney’s concerned.

They beat the Habs in OT, a fucking rocket from Geno from the top of the slot and right over Pricey’s glove that makes Sidney want to go to his knees at center fucking ice.

Back in the room, the guys are scrambling to get undressed, shower and get their shit in their cars, most of them leaving for their bye week vacations right from PPG.

Sidney takes his time, not heading out for Vail until tomorrow. So he’s still in his Under Armor when he hears the pop of champagne, Kuni laughing as Dales sprays him and Fehrsy and shouts, “Happy New Year, ya beauts!”

Dana rolls in a cart of champagne and Dumo chants “chug chug chug” as Conor desperately tries to drink a half a bottle and still get out the door to meet his fiance on time.

A few stalls down, Phil and Geno are comparing itineraries.

Phil is saying, “So we’ll probably spend two days in Key West, if you guys want to meet us?”

Geno is nodding, tapping something into his phone, “Anna say yes, she and Sandra already talk.” He glances up and catches Sidney’s eye. “Sid, Key West! Not just laying on beach — still time for you to come!”

Sidney laughs, “Sorry, boys, I have my complexion to think about.”

Phil chucks a sweaty gatorade towel at him. “If I can hack it, so you can, bud.”

“Like Sandra would give you the option,” Kuni calls and Phil shrugs.

“It’s true,” he says.

Sidney is looking forward to Vail — he wants five solid days of skiing, room service, Food Network, and hot tubs.

Not for the first time, he imagines what it would be like to have Geno there with him, nothing but time to be put on his knees, to crawl, to have someone else dictate his schedule. It makes him feel slightly light-headed as his entire face and chest flush hot.

Geno’s gaze bores into the side of Sidney’s head and he pulls his socks off.

When he comes out of the shower, Geno is still there, dressed and in Sidney’s stall. “You come over tonight,” he says, not looking up from his phone. “Party with Russians for New Years.”

Sidney shakes his head, even though he wants to say yes with his entire body. “I told you already, G, I gotta pack still.”

Geno looks up from his phone, his expression mulish.

Sidney hesitates and Geno sighs.

“How many times we say, our house your house.”

“People say that—“ Sidney starts.

“Who’s people? You have your own room, Sid.”

“It’s a guest room.”

Geno huffs. “Okay, Sid, whatever you like. But this is not a request.”

Which is how Sidney finds himself counting down to the New Year to the count of a pre-recorded New Year’s special from Moscow. Geno keeps appearing to refill his glass every time it’s half-empty, and the end result is Sidney overwarm and squarely in the happily tipsy category, accepting kisses from what seems to be every Russian living in the greater Pittsburgh area, Anna in Geno’s lap and the two of them kissing so deeply Sidney can see their tongues meet as they come up for air.

His insides squirm, pleasantly painful, and Gonch laughs from somewhere next to him, slinging an arm over his shoulder and sloppily kissing the corner of his mouth.

And how he finds himself, later, half-heartedly trying to clean up in the form of moving piles of dirty paper plates and plastic utensils from one surface to another in the kitchen, when Anna takes a serving tray half full of cheese from his hands.

“Sid,” she says, a little smile curving her mouth, and she puts her hands on Sidney’s face, her thumb stroking the sensitive skin in front of his right ear. “ _Idiot boy_.”

Sidney blinks at her. She’s beautiful, taller than him in heels and dark and intensely Russian, and her face has a similar expression he’s seen on Geno’s, the one that make his heart stutter.

“Okay?” he says stupidly and she kisses one cheek and then the other.

“You make Zhenya most happy.”

Sidney puts everything he has into it when he says, “He makes me happy, too.”

Her smile is the sun breaking through the clouds, a thing Sidney only thinks because he’s gone over the edge into poetically tipsy. “So happy you both find,” she says carefully, enunciating, and while Sidney is processing this he realizes how close her mouth is to his.

Sidney’s sure he hasn’t taken a breath in a full thirty seconds when she kisses him, softly, and he kisses her back, thinking about her kissing Geno and Geno kissing him and then mostly about nothing at all except her warm mouth and her warm body against his.

“ _Happy New Year_ ,” she says when she breaks away and Sidney sees movement over her shoulder. He looks and there’s Geno, leaning against the archway into the kitchen, beaming stupidly at them.

Sidney feels something shift in him, something that squirms away when he tries to put a finger on it. “ _Happy New Year_ ,” he says, back, clumsily, and Anna puts her head on his shoulder.

“Zhenya,” she says, “ _Take us to bed._ ”

“I—“ Sidney says and Geno is there, cupping a big hand around the back of Sidney’s skull, the crown of Anna’s head.

“Come,” he says, and Sidney follows them up the winding staircase to the master bedroom and their California King.

He wants, desperately, a thing he didn’t even know he was allowed to want.

“Just sleeping,” Geno says, pushing him gently down and arranging him where he wants him, sunk into a soft pillow and curved against Geno’s ribs. On Geno’s other side, Anna’s dark head is against Geno’s shoulder, her hand splayed low on his belly in a slice of light coming in the door from the nightlight in the hallway.

Geno kisses the side of Sidney’s head. “Goodnight,” he says firmly and Sidney closes his eyes, sure he won’t sleep.

He blinks awake five hours later, his legs tangled with Geno’s, his arm dead from where Geno’s head has rolled onto it, his fingers tangled in Anna’s hair past Geno’s shoulder. He extricates himself and staggers out of bed and into the adjoining bathroom.

He pisses, washes his hands and stares at himself in the mirror. He looks strangely not haggard, and the night before feels like a dream.

He considers a moment then turns on the shower — he has some spare clothes here, which. Okay, so maybe he stays here more than he realizes. He strips, hears a noise, a soft grunt, and peeks through the crack in the door out into the bedroom.

Geno is over Anna, holding himself up on his forearms with his head bent into the crook of her neck, his body moving slowly against hers. Sidney can see the curve of her cheek, her mouth open and her eyes closed as she sighs, tipping her head back and arching her neck.

Sidney jerks away, his heart in his throat, that strange pain that almost feels good pulsing deep in his gut. He gets in the shower and stands in the spray for a moment, imagining Geno’s cock sliding into her, her body arching under his, the clench of Geno’s thick ass and thighs.

He wonders if they wanted him to see.

He jerks off desperately, and when he comes he manages to feel guilty for not feeling guilty.

When he gets out and wraps one of Geno’s insanely expensive towels around his hips, Geno is sitting up in bed, alone, scrutinizing something on his phone.

“Sasha,” he says, frown lines creasing his forehead. “Chess.”

Sidney laughs shakily, because it’s all so _normal_. Geno’s literal months-long online chess battle with Ovechkin, his necklaces tangled up and hanging backward around his throat, his tufted bed head, and down the hall, Nikita fussing as Anna talks to him in Russian like she’s speaking to an adult, never the baby talk Sidney himself seems to be unable to not fall into whenever Nikita so much as looks in his general direction.

Geno chucks his phone into the rumple of duvet with a huge sigh then smiles brilliantly at Sidney, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and nodding at the floor in front of him.

He’s naked, his cock laying soft and flushed against his thigh.

Sidney drops his towel, his own dick trying valiantly to twitch to life. Geno flicks his gaze down and smirks.

“Tired, Sid?”

“Asshole,” Sidney grumbles, side-stepping whether or not he saw something he was supposed to see, shoving it back with all the other things he can’t quite parse for another time, and going to his knees in the plush throw rug at the side of the bed.

“Mm,” Geno agrees, rummaging around for his phone when it pings a notification at him. He thumbs the home screen with one hand, sinking his other into Sidney’s hair and pressing against his head until Sidney’s cheek comes to rest on Geno’s thigh.

Sidney crosses his hands behind his back, the way Geno likes him best, and Geno makes a fond, agreeable noise.

Sidney inhales deeply and closes his eyes, the comforting smell of come and sweat and soap and Geno, and Anna and Geno together, the smell of their bedroom and their skin and Sidney all threaded through. He breathes and breathes and Geno strokes a hand over and over his nape until the network of half-formed worries that make up the background noise in Sidney’s head all seem very insignificant.

Sidney hears someone standing quietly in the doorway a little while later, like it’s far away, the air in the room displaced for a moment.

“Okay,” Geno says, his voice rough, and Sid blinks, sits back at Geno’s gentle urging.

He drooled on Geno’s thigh, and he looks down at the slick skin he left behind before looking up at Geno.

Geno is looking back at him, his face soft, his eyes deep. “Sid,” he says and slides off the bed to kneel next to him, taking Sidney’s skull in his hands.

He leans forward and kisses him.

It’s not a kiss they’ve had before; it’s deep and intimate, Geno’s tongue working his mouth open and sliding firmly along his. It makes Sidney melt, his arms going slack behind him, his body swaying towards Geno, literally putting himself entirely into Geno’s hands. 

It goes on and on, Geno turning his head this way and that, until Sidney can barely breathe.

When he sits back, Sidney just stares at him, his brain a blissful blank.

“Enough for five days,” Geno says, thumbing over Sidney’s kiss-swollen mouth.

“Is it?” Sidney says without thinking and Geno’s eyes hood as he inhales sharply.

“Sid,” he murmurs and Sidney holds still, feeling the power balance shift slightly, disconcertingly, towards himself.

Geno shakes his head a little and chuckles, and it things shift back into place. “Up,” he says, standing first to pull Sid to his feet. “Get dressed, have breakfast before you go.”

“I shouldn’t,” Sidney demurs, suddenly shy about seeing Anna.

Geno rolls his eyes towards the ceiling dramatically and Sidney holds up his hands before Geno can say anything else. “Okay, okay.”

Breakfast is also normal, well, normal with an asterisk, scrambled eggs and leftover blinis and caviar and a bloody mary for Geno, who drinks it like it’s a protein shake after a game. Nikita sits in his hair chair and smashes cheerios in his chubby fists as fast as Geno can dole them out; Anna is rumpled and glowing in a stretched out white t-shirt and nothing else, her feet in Sidney’s lap as he drinks his perfectly sweet and milky coffee.

It’s a scene Sidney takes with him to Vail and pokes out every now and then over the next five days, along with the sweet, chaste kisses he got from each of them in turn at the front door, and, as he lays in his hotel bed, the gentle ache of Geno and Anna moving together, the space next to them empty, where Sidney had slept.

  


#

****  


**February**

January takes a sharp turn after a brutal game against St. Louis — Geno gets ground into the corner by Edmundson and though he waves off help, Sidney can see he’s not skating right, not putting enough weight onto his left leg. Fuck _._

Then Horny blocks a shot and goes down the tunnel, and when he comes back Sidney knows it’s only for the rest of the game.

By the time the game is over and they’re fucking _shut out_ , insult upon literal injury, Geno is clearly in agony. When Sidney sidles up alongside him and tries to take his weight once they're in the hallway back to the locker room, Geno shoves him away, snarling wordlessly at him.

_Fuck._

They fly all the way to Boston without Geno and Horny just to lose there, too, and that night Sidney has three texts from Anna, who’s in Miami, telling him to **call stupid** , but Sidney’s not sure who the “stupid” is in this scenario, so he calls Geno, who had been avoiding Sidney’s texts.

“Sid,” Geno says, miserably, when he answers, and Sidney wishes desperately he was there with him.

“Are you okay?”

Geno huffs a sigh. “Little bit pain, little bit mad.”

“Little bit bored?” Sidney teases gently and Geno laughs.

“Wish I’m there,” Geno says, after a moment and Sidney’s heart contracts at Geno echoing his thought, if not his exact meaning.

“I’m okay,” Sidney says quickly, to reassure him that he doesn’t need to feel like he needs to take care of Sidney all the time. Their sessions have gotten more frequent, more frequent than maybe Sidney had realized. He laughs a little. “I’d be a bigger mess than we thought if I couldn’t make it through the weekend, eh?”

There’s a long pause, too long. So long that Sidney thinks the call has dropped. “Hello?”

“Here,” Geno says, low, then, “Have to go, Sid, sorry. Just not…” he trails off.

“Okay,” Sidney says, uncertainly, feeling like he missed a step somewhere. “I’ll call when I’m home?”

“Yeah. Good luck.”

Ovechkin follows him around for the entirety of All-Star weekend, and he’s like a walking, bad joke-making reminder that Geno isn’t here when he’s supposed to be, and that something went a little sideways the last time they talked.

Sidney tries to shake him the first night, but resigns himself to the company and somewhere in there starts to have fun. His sister sends him a link to an article on TSN about his and Ovechkin’s new bromance with a text that says, **did your russian approve this???** Sidney texts back, **Geno’s not my Russian** , which is a little too close to the mark as far as Sidney’s tender feelings are concerned, but Taylor just texts back **sure** , bait that Sidney declines to take.

The Metro team plays the All-Star game mostly drunk off the smuggled vodka Ovechkin sprays into their mouths from a gatorade bottle (“this is how you’ll all get the mumps!” Seguin shouts as he skates by and JT shouts back, “and we all know how you got whatever’s probably rotting your dick off!” and Seguin throws his head back and laughs with delight, grabbing his crotch and flipping them the bird) but they win anyway, Sidney feeling like he’s flying when he pots one off an assist by Ovi.

 _Ovi_. He can’t wait to tell Geno.

And _ouch,_ maybe he’ll poke at that particular wound later, for now skating by the bench to receive his fist bumps, and an aggressive ass slap from Ovechkin.

When he gets back to the locker room he has a text from Geno that just says **)))))))** and Sidney is so relieved he feels tears prick his eyes.

Ovechkin stands over him and looks down with a raised eyebrow. “Checking in with Zhenya?”

Sidney bites the inside of his cheek. “What makes you think I have to check in with him?”

Ovechkin looks towards the heavens. “Sure, Sid.”

Sidney wonders, suddenly, if anyone knows about him and Geno. Then he wonders why he never wondered it before, always just assuming no one did or could ever.

But at some point it had stopped being a thing he was hiding, and became just another in a long line of the way things were when you were Sidney Crosby: Sidney had no public personal opinions, was never photographed unless he wanted to be, didn’t spend money on anything extravagant, had never been featured in a gossip column; no one knew who he dated, no one knew where he lived, and no one knew that he needed to kneel, that he needed Geno.

At first he thought he couldn’t tell anyone. Then he just wanted it for him.

He’s not sure why he’s hiding it anymore, except that when he thinks about telling people he realizes he doesn’t know what he’d tell them, because he’s doesn’t know what they are.

So maybe he does know why he’s hiding it, and it’s mostly because what they’re doing is scaring the shit out of him, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

  


#

  


When he gets home Geno is waiting for him, sitting in his car in Sidney’s driveway, and Sidney feels his legs go weak with relief.

Geno climbs out and Sidney puts a hand on Geno’s hip. “Please,” he says, having worried at the question of them the entire trip back and needing to be anchored down before he vibrates off the face of the planet.

Geno wordlessly folds him into his arms. “Sorry, Sid,” he says into the top of Sidney’s head and Sidney lets them inside, lets himself be manhandled up the stairs and into his bedroom, where Geno ties him up with the tie he had balled up in his pocket and blindfolds him with one he dug out of his closet, and puts him on his knees in the center of the room and touches him all over, gently, with no discernible pattern or rhythm, until Sidney can feel every single nerve-ending in his skin standing at attention, waiting for the next touch and then the next.

After, Sidney assumes Geno will leave like he usually does, but instead he knees up the bed, sitting against the headboard and pulling Sidney into his lap, stroking his hair and his shoulder and his arm until Sidney’s eyes get too heavy to stay open.

He wakes the next morning to Geno snoring and taking up three quarters of the bed and Sidney knows this is another in the long line of things they should probably be talking about but the month is so emotional as it is, better to leave it for later.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Tanger asks him at morning skate that day and Sidney touches his cheek instinctively.

“What?” he says, and doesn’t glance over at where Geno is playing keep away with Rusty.

Tanger narrows his eyes. “You’re smiling.”

“I smile!”

Flower bangs his stick on the ice. “Helloooo” he sing-songs and Tanger turns and fires a wrister that pings off the crossbar, leaving Tanger fuming and Flower cackling.

The next game sends the revolving door of injuries going around again: Cully comes back but in their last game in January, Conor gets stuck in the middle of a scrum to dig the puck out of a corner, coming away with both the puck and his elbow fucked for six weeks.

He’s devastated — his season was shaping up to be stellar, and they both know it won’t be possible to make up that much time.

Sidney thinks about what he’s needed, what Geno’s given him, when he’s at his lowest. He remembers earlier this season, his concussion, Geno setting up a guest room for him so he wouldn’t have to be alone — Sidney’s room, Geno had called it, and Sidney didn’t think it was strange, at the time, to all but move in with them.

He texts Conor after he’s already on his way and when Conor opens the door, his arm is in a sling and smile is brittle. “Hey, Sid. I don’t think I can go to the rink today.”

“I was thinking we could do it here.” This isn’t him and Geno, though, there are actual rules. “If you want, of course.”

Conor blinks, his mouth opening and closing, and then his smile edges more towards real. “I really do. Jordan’s out with the dogs, lemme tell her we need some time.”

It’s a good session, Conor on his knees on a pillow in front of the couch, his body angled towards Sidney’s leg so he can rest his cheek on Sidney’s knee while Sidney watches a Flip or Flop marathon, knowing the familiar rhythm and voices will help even if Conor can’t see them.

Sidney’s just barely put together a schedule to keep Conor out of his head while he recovers when Rusty takes a bad hit in Colorado. He takes a second to get up and when he does Sidney can see he’s pale and shaky and it’s taking everything he has to get back to the room under his own steam.

He doesn’t come back and Vyas lists him as “optimistically week-to-week.”

He takes Conor with him when he goes to Rusty’s, one floor above Conor’s apartment, and he feels like there’s something more he can do other than put them both on their knees at the same time.

He does it anyway, putting them so close their shoulders could brush, and Rusty sways slightly to initiate scant contact.

Conor doesn’t move away and Sidney sits in front of them, puts one hand on the crown of each of their heads, feeling the moment their shoulders release their tension and they melt into each other.

Then Olli breaks his hand and Schultzy gets a concussion, all on top of Haggy being out with a concussion already and Sidney begs Geno for sessions in the quiet room, anything Geno can give him, anytime they can find ten minutes, quick and efficient.

After the luxury of waking up with him, Sidney misses his touch but doesn’t ask for more and Geno doesn’t offer.

  


#

  


On top of everything, Sid is chasing his 1000th point and it’s driving him crazy that it hasn’t happened yet.

He’d love to say it doesn’t matter, but it’s gotten the guys worked up — a betting pool has started as to what game it’ll be, if it’ll be a goal or an assist, and who’ll be in on it.

“I’ve got me with the assist,” Flower says around a mouthful of Vero’s lasagna, the day after Valentine’s day. Every year he and Vero host a singles dinner: Sid has been the guest of honor for ten years running, with other guys rotating in and out. This year Phil is there, too (“But Key West man!” Dumo said when the news went around the room that he and Sandra split and Cully literally slapped him upside the head), along with Olli and Jake, and Murr and Chris, because part of Flower’s mentoring includes honoring team traditions.

They had brought a mess of chocolate covered strawberries, and Sidney, on his way to put the wine in the fridge, overheard Chris telling Vero Murr had insisted on making them himself. Vero hugged her until they were both sniffling suspiciously, sending Sidney backing out of the kitchen so quickly that he ran into an end table.

“Gonna be Geno,” Olli says matter-of-factly, pouring himself another glass of wine.

Sidney chokes on his own sip of wine and Phil pounds him on the back, smirking at him.

Flower blows a raspberry. “Geno, Geno, Geno. Why can’t it be me?”

Olli shrugs. “Cos it’s Sid.”

As though that explained everything. But even Flower seems to take this on board and the subject moves on.

In the end it’s not Geno, and Daley wins the pot because he’s somehow guessed it exactly, Sid assisting on a goal from Kuni.

Jake and Kuni crash into him, Jake screaming in his ear, before Dumo and Tanger join them. PPG goes insane, the cheering going on and on over the sound of the goal horn.

Suddenly Geno is on the ice, and joy bubbles up out of Sidney in a wild laugh. “G, get back to the bench! You’ll get ejected!”

Geno grins. “Worth it,” he says.

Geno going over the boards seems to have broken open the seal, and then Dales and Horny are there, then Bones, Rowney, Tanger again.

He turns in time to see Flower skating hard at him, and Sidney catches him around the waist, tipping their faces together against the grate of Flower’s mask.

“You fucking did it!” Flower yells.

Sidney laughs. “I fucking did it!”

Flower’s grin is so big you can probably see it from space, and neither of them say what they’re thinking — that Flower was there, between the pipes, that it’s mid-February and he’s still there and Sid got his 1000th point with all his favorite people around him.

He looks back to Geno, who’s climbed begrudgingly back over the boards but still has his thigh bent up over it, waiting.

Sidney skates past him, slow, punches his chest. Geno’s grin is filthy, his tongue poking out between his teeth.

Sidney goes hot under his pads, and Kuni opens the door to the bench to let him in with a knowing smirk.

Later, Dana wheels in a cooler full of beer and there’s a three-tiered cheesecake. Dales demands his money and Geno counts it out agonizingly slowly, everyone knowing they’ll be fined if they rush him.

“C’mon, G!” Sidney yells and a chorus of “ooohs” go up.

Geno doesn’t look up from his counting when he says, “Fined, Sid. Bad lead by example, very sad.”

“What do I owe?” Sidney says, hearing a wild edge to his voice.

Geno does look up then, raising one eyebrow, and Sidney’s breath sticks in his throat, his heart stooping in his chest, wondering if Geno will put him on his knees in front of everyone.

Geno’s other eyebrow goes up to meet the first and he licks his lips, shrugging overly casual. “You already owe me five for getting to 1000,” he says, nodding to the puck in Sidney’s hand. “Double it.”

A thousand dollars is more than worth it for the look on Geno’s face when Sid pushed, just a little, and still is, later, when they’re back at Sidney’s house, all the pent-up energy from weeks of trying to get this thing done built up against Sidney’s skin from the inside.

Sidney’s not the only one climbing the walls; Geno is uncharacteristically restless. He orders Sidney to strip, puts him on his knees, then pulls him up again, holding his arms crossed in the small of his back. Sidney wants everything, anything, all the stuff they’ve never talked about and then some: he thinks about being put over Geno’s lap, what Geno’s open palm would feel like against his ass, what it would feel like to be fingered open.

To be fucked.

He shudders, and Geno blinks down at him, seeming to shake himself back. He pulls Sidney’s tie from the wreckage of his suit on the floor, and slides the soft material around his wrists where they’re still crossed behind his back, tying it tight enough that Sidney can’t pull them apart.

“Is this punishment,” Sidney asks breathlessly, “Or a reward?”

Geno touches his tongue to his top teeth for a moment, his eyes dark. “It’s both for you, no?”

Sidney’s mouth goes dry. _What is it for you?_ He doesn’t ask, because he’s not sure he’s ready to hear the answer.

Instead, he shrugs a little and Geno smiles fondly as he presses gently on Sidney’s shoulders until he goes to his knees, Geno himself sitting on the edge of the bed.

They stare at each other for a moment, Geno searching his face for something that he must find; Sidney knows what’s going to happen a split second before Geno’s hands go to his fly, slowly, like Sidney could tap out at any moment.

He slides down the zip of his jeans and takes his dick out, half-hard. Sidney knows that Geno sometimes gets hard when Sidney kneels, but he’s heard that it’s normal, that some people do.

Sidney doesn’t when he Doms, ever, but Sidney’s brand of normal is different than most people 99 percent of the time so he never really thought about it.

But here, now, Geno’s cock thickening in front of his face, his mouth suddenly fills with saliva. He can’t imagine this ever happening during a routine scene with the rookies at the rink but he’s too amped up to process what that might mean for them. Instead, he shuffles closer, inhaling.

Geno’s eyes dip closed then open; he brushes a tender thumb along Sidney’s cheekbone.

Sidney blinks. Geno’s never asked permission, but this feels pretty close to it, that same momentum shift he felt on New Year’s Day swooping through his belly. It crosses the last line, the one they never even talked about to begin with, and Sidney lets the momentum carry him forward. Sidney holds Geno’s eyes and opens his mouth slightly, turning his face so Geno’s thumb slips just inside, along his lower lip.

Geno makes a wounded noise and jerks Sidney forward with both hands around his skull, his cockhead slipping along the open seam of Sidney’s mouth and over Geno’s thumb.

Sidney opens wide and puts out his tongue and waits, his face flaming half with embarrassment and half with anticipation.

“Good,” Geno says, “Just like that,” and he slides his dick in carefully, pulling out then sinking a little deeper, again and again, a slow fuck that stretches Sidney’s mouth wider than he thought possible, drool slicking the corners of his mouth and his chin.

Geno’s quiet as he moves, his cock is thick and heavy against Sidney’s tongue, the smell of his skin making him feel drunk.Sidney loses himself in the rhythm, in having to dole out his breath, his hands flexing behind him in a reminder that he has no control over the pace.

Just as he’s starting to drift, Geno’s fingers clench in Sidney’s hair, the sting jolting him halfway back. Geno tips his head up and stares at him as he pushes forward inexorably, nudging into Sidney’s throat. Sidney takes a breath before his breath gets stopped up, relaxing his palette, and then Geno’s cockhead is in his throat, replacing Sidney’s breath with _Geno_.

Geno holds him there, thumbing at a tear that involuntarily leaks from the corner of Sidney’s eye as he works to keep his throat from trying to close up.

“Oh, Sid,” Geno murmurs, his own eyes suddenly wet and then he’s moving again, pulling out to let Sid breathe before he fucks back in, and in, and in, setting a punishing rhythm that Sidney just barely manages to keep up with.

He’s hard, his dick brushing against the bed on every out stroke, but his body feels so removed that coming doesn’t feel very urgent.

Geno’s body starts to shake and he struggles to keep his eyes open. “Fuck,” he gasps, “Oh.”

Sidney looks up through his lashes, trying to convey to Geno yes, yes, _yes_.

Geno shouts, curves his body over Sidney’s, and for a moment Sidney can’t breathe at all; his entire world narrows down to the feeling of Geno pulsing in his mouth, come on the back of his tongue, Geno’s hands in his hair, Geno’s belly pressing against the crown of his head, tethering him to the earth.

He comes back to himself slowly, Geno guiding him up to the bed, a warm cloth wiping down his face, over his numb lips, through the sweaty curls at his hairline. He hears the ring of metal against metal, the rustle of clothing, and then Geno is climbing in next to him, gathering him close, Sidney’s back to Geno’s chest.

His hand makes its way down Sidney’s belly, and Sidney lets his legs sprawl open, rolling his hips up mindlessly.

Geno mouths at the juncture of Sidney’s shoulder and neck, closes his hand around Sidney’s cock.

Sidney actually moans, a noise he’ll probably be embarrassed about later, and Geno twists his hand, just on this side of too tight, perfect.

Geno jacks him hard, fast, exactly the way Sidney does for himself, and Sidney realizes he’s not in control of his body a moment before his orgasm is suddenly there, cresting and breaking without Sidney’s permission, a high-pitched “Ah!” punched out of him as his whole body goes tight.

Geno keeps stroking him, slow now, milking out everything, and it’s instantly too much.

“I—“ Sidney says, and tries not to speak but can’t help himself, his body shaking and shuddering out of his control.

“Double it,” Geno says, his voice somehow mild, matter-of-fact.

Sidney shakes his head. “I c-can’t.”

Geno’s mouth moves against him, just as slow as his hand. “You can.”

His skin is on fire, nerves misfiring, his brain a riot of white noise that he realizes is him babbling. “Please,” he’s saying, “please please.”

Geno is relentless, never faltering, and he bites at the cap of Sidney’s shoulder just as the wave comes again, something like an orgasm but not, pure, hot sensation, engulfing his entire body.

Sidney wails, his heels digging into the bed and pushing his hips into Geno’s hand and then Geno is holding him, his voice in Sidney’s ear, and for five minutes nothing else exists but the breath in Sidney’s lungs and the two of them.

It turns out that waking up next to Geno is something Sidney could get too used to.

  


#

  


Sidney’s high lasts all of five days, until one of the many inevitable crashes that’s been the hallmark of the season: In the first period of a game against Carolina, Dales gets smeared against the glass and goes down bad — his knee, and he needs surgery.

Even worse, Tanger is playing strange, and it comes out after: it’s probably his last game for the regular season, as he admits to them that he can’t play with his back fucked up anymore. He’d been trying to hold out until after the trade deadline, but it’s not getting better and it’s not fair to the team to wait: he has to rest it and do PT or get surgery, and surgery can’t be an option.

“It can be,” Flower says mildly, the five of them huddled in the front of the plane so the kids don’t hear.

Tanger shoots him a sour look, knowing he can’t bring up the post-season without getting a lecture from Sidney about jinxes. But they’re all thinking it — if he gets surgery, his post-season is over, too, and the game against Winnipeg will most likely be his last with Flower on the ice, their last with all five of them, the only ones left from 2009.

Their blue line is decimated, and the trade deadline is in a week.

They’re all quiet the rest of the flight home, though Geno sits behind Sidney and stretches his leg out into the aisle; Sidney could reach down and touch it if he wanted to.

He doesn’t. But it’s nice to know he could.

Their last game of the month is in Dallas, on the day of the trade deadline. 

They fly in the day before and Flower takes him out for steak that night, and though it’s totally normal, the same routine they’ve done for ten years, Sidney knows in his gut it’s anything but.

“They have a chocolate fountain,” Flower says on the walk from the hotel, like Sidney still needs to be convinced, and his smile is so gentle, so sincere, that Sidney knows, suddenly, what Flower is going to say.

They’ve been avoiding it since the summer, since Flower Face Timed him on his Cup day and his eyes looked strange and shiny and they determinedly didn’t talk about it, instead Sidney listened patiently while Estelle ran down her list of which ice creams would taste best out of the Cup and why and Alex tried to shove Scarlett up into the Cup and then when Sidney tried to say something more serious Flower unceremoniously handed him off to Vero and refused to take the phone back.

Vero just smiled sadly and said, “You know him,” and Sidney did but it didn’t make it any easier. Vero kissed the screen and Sidney laughed a little, surprised to find his throat thick and froggy with emotion, and then she held the phone out so everyone could say goodbye, Tanger and Cath and Flower with their shoulders leaning up against each other, the kids’ faces all smeared with melted ice cream.

“Sidney,” Flower says now, after managing to get through the majority of his t-bone without bringing it up, “I’m going to waive my no-move clause.”

Sidney just stares at him for a second, tries to speak, clears his throat. “You don’t have to.”

Flower lifts one shoulder. “I know. I want to. It’s time, and I want to stay as long as I can.”

“How long—“ Sidney has to clear his throat again. “How long have you known?”

“Officially, end of January.” Flower twirls his wine glass. “Unofficially? Jim outlined some, ah, theoreticals?”

“Hypotheticals,” Sidney says woodenly, looking at Flowers long fingers on the stem of his glass.

“He outlined some hypotheticals at Camp in September.”

Sidney blinks. His shoulders and chest feel tight, like he’s been physically holding the team together and they’re tearing out of his grasp.

He feels like he’s massively failed his best friend.

“André,” he forces out, and Flower barks out a startled, pained laugh at the name only Vero and Tanger ever use. “I could have helped you.”

“Oh, Sidney,” Flower says, and scrubs his hands over his face. “You did, my friend. You’re the reason I have the strength to stay. One more Cup together yeah?”

Sidney nods and blinks his eyes wide, desperately trying to hold back the tears that are pressing against his eyes.

Flower’s not even pretending to be able to keep it together, wiping the heels of his hands across his cheeks.“Thought I could avoid this if we did it in public,” he laughs wetly. “Not my finest plan, eh?”

“Are any of them?” Sidney says and Flower laughs again, for real this time. Sidney joins in, and they giggle helplessly, relieved and heart-broken and suddenly tipsy on emotion.

“I want to tell the guys tomorrow, after practice.But can you tell Geno, I don’t think I can do it — at least you can keep yourself together, you know he’ll cry openly, he doesn’t care where we are.”

“Of course,” Sidney laughs and, on impulse, grabs Flower’s hand and squeezes it quickly before letting go.

Flower’s cheeks pink up and he sits back, throwing his napkin over the remains of his steak. “Now come on, I think I promised you a chocolate fountain.”

Sidney tells Geno the next morning over breakfast and Flower was right, he does cry, like he doesn’t even want to help it, tears leaking steadily from the corners of his eyes even though they’re in the lobby of the hotel and people can see them. The team gives them a wide berth, only Kuni and Cully meeting Sidney’s eyes over the top of Geno’s bowed head to give Sidney a little nod.

They lose that night, then they lose Fehrsy in a trade to Toronto, and they lose again the night after that, in Chicago, with Flower in net. And though Flower looks better than he has in weeks, Sidney feels totally blasted, like all his skin is flayed off under his pads. It’s getting harder and harder for him to recover, to put on his game face for the next game.

Geno, already stripped down to his shorts, takes his skates out of his hands and drops them decisively in front of his stall, holding out a hand to pull him up. “Come.”

Sidney goes, protesting the entire way, “G, the bus.”

“Bus will wait,” Geno says, shoving him into the adjoining conditioning room. “And if not, you can afford cab.” He pauses as Sidney opens his mouth. “Yes, and plane ticket.”

“Dana needs my gear—“

Geno shoves Sidney back against the closed door, not very gently. “No more talk,” he says, his face set in an expression that now makes Sidney’s heart race in anticipation. He licks his lips, then sinks slowly, carefully to his knees.

“G.” Sidney looks down at him dumbly, reaching out and then stopping himself, unsure if he’s allowed to touch. He’s never see Geno from this vantage point before and he can’t stop looking, taking in every detail.

Geno smoothes his hands over Sidney’s hips through his hockey pants, hooks his fingers into the waistband. “No sound,” he says, “last time I say,” and Sidney shudders, pressing his lips together and pulling them firmly between his teeth.

Geno hm’s, undressing him agonizingly slowly — drawing his pants down and urging him to step out of them, unwinding the tape around his socks, flicking his garters open, setting aside his shinguards. When he gets to Sidney’s jock, Sidney takes a breath to say wait, his entire body recoiling, but bites down on it just in time.

“ _Good_ ,” Geno says in Russian, smiling a secret smile as he delicately tugs the jock down, letting it drop to Sidney’s feet.

Sidney steps out of it, his face flaming with embarrassment. It’s not that he thinks Geno hasn’t seen him at his worst, smelled him at his rankest, but he’s struggling to reconcile the two sides of their relationship; they’ve been slowly bleeding together, obliterating the line Sid used to use as a safety net, but it happened so gradually he didn’t realize.

“Close your eyes,” Geno says, and Sidney’s grateful for it, his heart feeling cracked open.

Geno’s murmuring softly in Russian now, endearments that make Sidney feel stupid and soft and he blows out a slow breath, pictures Geno on his knees in front of him, an image that he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget: the thick chain and black cord of his necklaces laying against his nape, his hair thinning at the crown of his head, the the breadth of his bare shoulders sloping downwards, the caps of them roped with muscle.

Geno moves his body this way and that, and Sidney lets go, putting himself entirely in Geno’s hands as Geno peels him out of his pads and sweat-soaked Under Armor. He shivers a little as the air cools the sweat under his arms and behind his knees and in the small of his back, the prickle of goosebumps reminding him he has a body to come back to when he’s ready.

“Sid,” Geno says gently, and Sidney’s knees lock as he comes back to himself, reaching out to briefly steady himself on Geno’s thick shoulder.

He’s naked, half-hard, his cock curving towards Geno’s face. He couldn’t speak even if he was allowed, even if Geno’s dark, stern eyes weren’t warning him off.

“ _You want it?_ ” Geno asks, staring at Sidney’s cock.

Sidney honestly doesn’t know, feels mostly like it doesn’t matter what he wants; he’s stripped down inside and out, rank and raw and secure with the knowledge that even though Geno’s the one on his knees, the power is all in his hands.

“ _I do_ ,” Geno goes on. “ _Probably too much. After the last time—”_ He breaks off and Sidney desperately wants him to continue but doesn’t know how to push him.

The moment stretches out, Geno ghosting his fingers over the shaft of Sidney’s dick and Sidney just barely manages to swallow a noise, his eyes sinking closed.

Suddenly there’s a towel around his waist, and Geno’s lips on his cheek. Sidney’s eyes startle open.

“You feel good?” Geno asks.

It’s a half-question, and Sidney considers addressing the other version that isn’t a question. He clears his throat and says honestly, “Fucking awesome.”

Geno huffs a laugh. “Awesome. Go shower. I find Dana, then wash quick, we still make bus.”

Sidney glances up at the clock above the massage table, tucking the end of the towel in at his waist. “We might have missed it.”

“No problems, Sid.” Geno taps the side of his head. “Flower hold it.”

Sidney thinks of the cozy conversations Geno and Flower are always having in dark corners of bars and tucked away tables at team breakfast and as they lag behind walking from the bus to the room before games and wonders again at Flower and Tanger.

Geno reaches around Sidney to pull the door open, smacking it into Sidney’s butt. “Don’t think so much, you strain something.” And he kisses the side of Sidney’s head before shuffling him aside to shove him gently into the hallway. “Go.”

As usual, it’s easier to follow orders than to argue. So he goes.

  


#

****  


**March**

At this point, the team is basically being held together with duct tape and hope.

When Sidney mentions this to Geno one night, after Anna has fallen asleep with her head in Geno’s lap and her feet in Sidney’s, Geno laughs and says, “And I’m hold you together.”

“I don’t know how sustainable that is, though,” Sidney says without thinking and Geno narrows his eyes. “I mean, you’re already duct taped together,” he backtracks, waving at the now ever-present kinesio tape on Geno’s wrist.

Geno’s face is carefully blank when he picks up the remote to continue their Game of Thrones rematch to refresh them for the new season.

Conor’s first game back is a ride.

They have a truly miserable first period, going into a 3-0 hole. In the room, Geno is fired up, getting in people’s faces and banging his stick, and he carries it back out onto the ice, passing to Schultzy to get them on the board and later, one-times a laser bar down, with a roar that makes Sidney’s dick twitch in his cup. Flower’s in net and he gets into a shoving match with a Buffalo D who’s crowding him, and it whips everyone up further because they’re going to come back, Sidney can feel it.

With four minutes left, Jake pots a beauty and a minute later Sidney sees a lane open up in front of Conor. Conor screams wildly for the puck and Schultzy sends it right onto his tape and Conor rockets it in.

Sidney knows the look on Conor’s face, knows he could probably vibrate right out of his skin; he slams into him and holds on tight, gripping his hip as hard as he can through glove and pads.

Conor takes a breath and laughs and goes to get his fist bumps.

Later, Sidney sees Conor meets Rusty’s eyes for a beat too long as they come down the hallway and into the dressing room, Rusty in sweats from his PT session.

Geno passes him and swats him on the ass. “Work to do, Sid,” he says, and nods at the knot of rookies around Conor, and then back at Rusty.

Sidney laughs a little. “Good game, G.”

He takes Conor and Rusty into the conditioning room and Rusty is shifting back and forth a little, his body language saying he needs the help but doesn’t think he can accept it. Conor puts his hand on Rusty’s lower back, briefly, and Sidney is struck with a sudden idea.

He puts Rusty on his knees in front of Conor, explaining what he wants, and Rusty goes gratefully, so fast he laughs a little at himself then looks up at Sidney.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

Rusty looks down then back up and Sidney takes pity on him, putting his hand on the crown of Rusty’s head. “It’s okay. Just go as slow as you need.”

Rusty undresses Conor slowly, almost clumsily, and they keep checking in with each other, tiny glances here, a reassuring touch there. When Conor’s down to his briefs, his thighs are shaking and he can barely keep his eyes open — Sidney guides him down onto a chair and Rusty shuffles closer, laying his forehead on Conor’s knee.

Sidney smoothes a hand over Rusty’snape and Rusty sighs heavily. “Whenever you guys are ready, okay?” He opens the door. “I’ll see you at morning skate tomorrow.”

They leave for Winnipeg two days later, and Sidney thinks he’s the only one who hangs back after morning skate before heading to the plane, but he hears a noise in the conditioning room.

The door is cracked open but Sidney hesitates before opening it, peeking through the sliver of space, and he’s glad he did.

Inside is Conor, sitting on the same chair Sidney put him in two days ago, with Rusty kneeling between his spread knees. Rusty’s breathing deep, the kind of breath Sidney recognizes from their sessions, where half his brain is still firing but he’s sliding slowly into subspace.

Oh. _Oh_.

Conor runs a gentle hand through Rusty’s hair. “So good, dude.”

Rusty makes a small sound at that, almost a laugh and Conor pinks up.

“Shut up,” he says affectionately and Rusty blows all his breath out, his shoulders going loose.

Sidney backs up quietly.

Later, on the plane, when Flower dozes off, Sidney goes to find Geno. “Hey,” he says, and Geno cracks open an eye. “I know we don’t usually, in a hotel, but…”

Geno smiles indulgently. “Of course, Sid.”

“Just kneeling,” Sidney clarifies, because he wants the rest of it too much, has been feeling for a long time like he’s taking advantage of Geno, of how much Geno cares about him and how seriously he takes putting Sidney on his knees.

“Sure, Sid,” Geno says carefully. He hesitates, then he seems to decide something. “You know you just have to ask, yes?”

Sidney chuckles nervously. “Yeah.”

Frustration clouds Geno’s face. “For anything. You know this.”

“I— Yeah. I do. I ask. I just did.”

Geno just looks at him, then closes his eyes again. “Okay, Sid.”

Sidney returns to his seat and Flower hikes up the side of his sleep mask. “ _You need to talk_?” he asks in French.

He considers it, but he’s just off his game — things are shifting around him too fast, and he’s notoriously bad with change. Flower already knows that, but he doesn’t need the reminder and more chirping ammunition. “Nah, I’m good.”

Flower eyeballs him for another second before dropping the mask back down. “You’re not, but I’ll let you off the hook for now. Now stop moving around so much. I’ll tell you this much, I’m not gonna miss your restless leg.”

“Yes, you are,” Sidney says sulkily, putting on his headphones and Flower pats his thigh.

Sidney slips on his own sleep mask but mostly just stares at the black inside of it until he finally dozes.

  


#

  


As though Sidney couldn’t hate them more, they get shut out by Philly on their last game of the roadie and Geno tweaks his wrist, bad, the same wrist that’s been giving him trouble on and off since he took a hard check in December.

Sidney drives him home from the airport, arranging for someone to drop Geno’s car off the next day, and they sit in the driveway for a minute before Geno gives a huge sigh.

“Good to be home, eh?” Sidney taps Geno’s thigh with a closed fist.

Geno gives him a tired smile and pops the door open.

“Wait,” Sidney blurts out and when Geno turns back Sidney darts over the center console and kisses him, catching the corner of his mouth.

He pulls back and Geno blinks at him, then brings up his good hand and grabs the front of Sidney’s coat, pulling him firmly forward and kissing him soundly. Geno parts Sidney’s lips with his tongue, hot against Sidney’s cold mouth, and they kiss for a long, breathless minute.

When Geno finally sits back, Sidney feels dazed.

Geno’s smile is marginally less tired this time. “Night, Sid.” And he opens the door, letting in a rush of midnight air.

They win against New Jersey and Sidney opts out of practice on Saturday, puttering around the house instead to rest up for the game against Florida.

He’s weighing whether or not to order food while he searches for a checkpoint in Call of Duty, when his phone buzzes. He ducks behind a wooden crate so he can glance away from the screen — it’s Geno.

**You home?**

Sidney agonizes over walking away when he’s so close to the end of this campaign, and he types with one hand, **door open**. Thank god for autocorrect.

A minute later the front door opens. “Hey, G! In here!” Sidney rushes to try to find the checkpoint as Geno rustles around in the front hall. When he comes into the living room, he’s down to socked feet, sweatpants that hang low on his hips, and a threadbare Team Russia t-shirt, his hair soft and rumpled.

Sidney stares at him for so long that he only remembers what he was doing when the controller in his hands buzzes, letting him know he’s taking heavy fire. He looks back at the screen and he’s just standing there, out in the open under a barrage of bullets; a bare second later, his health runs out.

Geno comes around the edge of the couch and takes the controller from Sidney’s hands.

“G?”

Geno shakes his head, folds himself between Sidney’s spread legs. “I’m ask tonight,” he says hoarsely, and puts his face on Sidney’s thigh.

Sidney looks down at him and reaches out tentatively, to touch his hair, his cheekbone, the divot of a scar from a skate blade that caught him in the face two years ago, one of Sidney’s favorite parts of him. “Yeah,” he says, “of course.” though he’s not sure he knows how to navigate this, never having thought that Geno would need to kneel that way he does.

He stands and pulls Geno up and they go upstairs silently,

In the bedroom, Sidney snags a pillow from the bed and tosses it down in front of the wingback chair in the corner, figuring they’ll just keep it simple. “Is your knee going to be okay on that or—“ he stops at the strange look on Geno’s face. “What?”

“Oh,” Geno says, “No. No, Sid. That’s not what I’m asking.”

Sidney looks at the pillow and then back at Geno. “I don’t understand.”

Geno steps close, then slides his palm across Sidney’s collarbone and up over his shoulder. He circles him slowly, draws his palm between Sidney’s shoulderblades, down his spine, into the dip of his lower back and then over his opposite hip.

Sidney shivers, his dick half-hard, knees weak.

“On the bed,” Geno murmurs, “hands and knees.”

Sidney’s entire body goes hot, his brain shorting.

“This what I want. What I need. Didn’t you know?”

Sidney didn’t know. This whole time, he didn’t know you could want it from the other side — he thought wanting what he did was a weakness, getting the routine confused with emotions because he was different. His mouth opens and closes.

“Sid?” Geno cups his face with his bad hand, his wrist immobilized in a brace but his fingers still agile, his thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “You knew, yes?”

“I—“ but there’s nothing to say, is there, not now.

He never knew. He never even thought.

He’s been telling Geno with every request, every touch, every small movement and anticipation of Geno’s commands. But he never thought to wonder what Geno was trying to tell him.

“I’m try to say, all the time, but—“ He swallows, continues in Russian. “ _You don’t make it easy.”_

Sidney flinches back.

“ _I love you,_ Sid. I love you. Anna love you. I want you always, like this. Not a job for me. Not for hockey. For you.”

Sidney stares over Geno’s shoulder at nothing. It’s everything he never let himself even hope to ever hear from Geno’s mouth, but now that it’s here it turns out it’s absolutely terrifying.

The landscape he thought he knew shifts under his feet, and the future is one he doesn’t know anymore, can’t recognize.

“I think,” Sidney clears this throat. “I think you should go. I’m sorry.”

“Sid,” Geno says, shocked, but Sidney shakes his head, meeting Geno’s eyes steadily.

Geno pulls himself up tall and gives Sidney a wide berth. He pauses at the door. “I want you, Sid. But I want what you want more. If you want me, I’m happiest. If not,” he smiles a little painfully, “is okay, too.”

“Been a hard year, Sid. But get reward at the end of it, I promise.” And then he’s gone.

Before he even makes a conscious decision, Sidney is sinking down to his knees onto the pillow, leaning forward to put his forehead on the edge of the chair. He breathes in and out, in and out, for a long time before sleep finds him.

  


#

  


The next night, against Florida, everything Sidney has gets funneled into hockey; Sidney gets a hat trick and Flower gets a shut out and Geno’s there in his suit in the hallway, meeting Sidney’s eyes with a soft, sad smile.

**#**

****  


**April**

Right after they make the playoffs, Conor asks him to get a beer and haltingly explains that he would like to take over with Rusty. Sidney nods in all the right places and takes it all very seriously.

When they part ways Conor shakes his hand, his lips twitching as he struggles not to laugh at himself, so Sidney laughs and little, and Conor joins in, so clearly relieved.

“Thanks, Sid, I really appreciate it. And thanks for, I dunno.” He shuffles his feet a little. “I know it must be hard, keeping it totally platonic. I couldn’t, clearly. And Jordan and Kels hit it off right away, too, so. Anyway, sorry to make this weird.” He smiles sheepishly. “Guess that’s why you’re the captain, huh?”

Sidney blinks, the wind knocked out of him. “No, you didn’t make it weird at all. I’m glad to have helped.”

He thinks now he maybe underestimated the amount of people who cross the line Sidney thought everyone had. Maybe most people don’t even know there’s supposed to be a line.

Sidney spends most of his downtime at the rink, throwing himself into training, into keeping Jake focused, watching endless minutes of youtube videos of Brandon Dubinsky getting the shit kicked out of him in preparation for their match-up against Columbus. And then the rest of his time is spent pretending everything is fine with him and Geno.

Geno, somehow, doesn’t act any different, joining Sidney’s workouts with Trinca (modified so he doesn’t fuck up his elbow or his shoulder to compensate for his wrist), putting Sidney’s name up on the board when it comes out he never paid his fine for his 1000th point, promising sangria in advance for the barbecue Sid’s going to throw in their brief downtime between the regular season and post because he knows Sid needs to be able to check boxes off his preparation list.

He brings Sidney coffee in the mornings and has taken him out to lunch three times, but he never brings up sex, he never asks if Sidney needs to kneel. It feels new and familiar all at once, and Sidney keeps forgetting that he kicked Geno out, that he didn’t say anything back when Geno said “I love you”.

He’s still not sure why, only that every time he thinks about telling Geno what he wants, he feels strange and tender, a dull pain blooming in his gut.

“You’re strung too tight, my friend,” Flower says, out to dinner once they’re back in Pittsburgh after their last game. “Look at me. Look how relaxed I am. And I lost my two last games as a Penguin.”

Sidney waves him off. “Stop.”

“I’m serious. Jarry probably has a better save percentage than me and he lost last night. Not that I look at that stuff.”

Sidney snorts. “Yes, you do.”

Flower continues as though Sidney hasn’t spoken. “I bet they’ll have to package me with actual decent draft picks now if they want to tempt Vegas to take me.”

“Stop,” Sidney snaps. “Just. Stop.”

“Hey,” Flower snaps right back. “You think I’m not fucking heartbroken? You think this is how I wanted to end things? You’re not the only one struggling, Sid.”

“I know that.” Sidney crosses his arms over his chest. “And it’s not even over yet, so.”

Flower sits back heavily. “I can’t tell if this is still about me, anymore. If it is…” he shrugs. “It’s okay. It’s the way it is. There will always be more hockey. And if it’s not.” He leans forward. “Fucking talk to him, eh? The two of you moping around is driving everyone up the wall.”

Sidney pokes at his pasta.

“Oh, boy,” Flower sighsand flags the server down to order another bottle of wine.

  


#

  


**May**

Sidney’s not sure how it happens until he watches the tape later, days later. At the time, it all happens so fast his memory parses it as one second he’s reaching for the puck and can see daylight between the post and Holtby, Holtby’s body angled away from him, and the next second the world goes black, the pain so excruciating that for a moment Sidney can’t feel anything, not his head, his hands, his entire body.

He blinks and he can’t see and his mouth fills with coppery panic; then his heart thuds in his ears once, hard, and the world snaps back into place, the ice under his back, the klieg lights in his eyes, and pain roars between his ears.

He tries to turn over, pushes up to his knees, and his body gives out. He puts his face on the ice and reminds himself, breathe, just breathe, move your hands, wiggle your toes, and just fucking breathe.

He gets his knees under him again and then Stew is there, one steady hand on his helmet, the other on his glove.

“Sid, you’re okay,” he says, “You're up, that's great. Can you turn over?"

Sidney tries to say yes but the word slips a little in his brain when he reaches for it. He nods, stars exploding behind his eyes and Stew says, “Okay, okay, let's just try, I got you."

Panic is clawing at the base of Sidney's throat as he tries to order his thoughts, finding it hard to think anything other than, please no, please, _please_.

And then he’s over, up on one elbow; he can see skates around him and he blinks hard to bring everything into focus. Breathe, he says to himself, and Stew echoes it, “Just breathe. You know the drill. Do you know where you are?”

PPG, he wants to say, but his tongue feels dumb and the lights force his eyes closed.

"It's okay, Sid. You wanna try again?"

"PPG," he grits out, "Please, Stew." 

"Okay, I know. You ready to try getting your skates under you?”

“Yeah,” Sidney grits out again.

Stew looks up. “Horny, Ronnie, let’s go.” And then Sidney’s being lifted onto his skates and the crowd thunders applause.

“Attaway, Cap,” Ronnie says, “Hey, you got a visitor.”

Sidney looks up, past Stew, and sees Geno circling the ice like a shark, coming as close as Phil, shadowing him, will let him.

Later, though Sidney probably could have figured this out for himself, Phil will tell him that they held Geno back as long as they could, until Sully eventually told him to just go. Phil followed him to stop him from actually killing someone, and Hags, who was next to them at the time, will tell him he remembers thinking they gave Niskanen a major more to protect him from Geno than to punish him for a bad hit.

And in the moment, Geno does look angry. He looks terrifying, his brow thunderous and all his bulk drawn up and puffed out. But Sidney knows him, and he can see underneath it all Geno is scared shitless.

It takes everything he has, but “I’m okay,” Sidney mouths to him and Geno jerks his chin up in acknowledgement.

Back in the quiet room, Sidney knows what the outcome of protocol will be before Vyas says it.

Fucking concussions. Fucking _Washington._

He dresses in his suit, slowly and deliberately, no sudden movements then waits in the quiet room for the game to be over.

When the knob rattles, he knows who it is, and he’s right.

Geno, dressed again in most of his suit, slim trousers and vest over rolled up shirtsleeves and the sight of him make something in Sid break open.

He slides off the table and Geno takes him by the shoulders, raking his eyes over every inch of him.

"What if--" Sid starts and can't finish because his throat closes up. What if he can't play, what if he loses hockey, what if he lost Duper and now he's losing Flower and what if next he loses Geno because he did the thing he said he'd never do and crossed a line and what if he's just meant to be alone, sad and strange and searching for words he'll never be able to find inside his scrambled up brain. 

Geno takes him in his arms carefully. "Don't do this to yourself. A day at a time, Sid, you know this."

“G,” Sidney says, helplessly, and his voice cracks.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Geno says gently. “Never have, no matter what happens, concussion or losing a game or missing your best friend. Just think you do.” He steps closer. "Too hard to do alone, even dumb rookies know this."

Sidney laughs wetly without meaning to and it opens the gate to something huge welling up in him, some wild and uncontrollable emotion as he leans back to look up at Geno’s familiar face, a face that Sidney still remembers rosy-cheeked and padded with baby fat, the boy he grew up alongside still there under the man he’s become.

"I'm miss Flower, too," Geno says. "So much. Every day it's so painful."

Sidney doesn't nod because it hurts too much, doesn't speak because he can't.

Geno looks and looks and looks at him, and then he dips his chin towards the floor, eyes flickering down and then back up.

Relief collapses his body under him, and Sidney goes down hard, the rubber flooring comforting and familiar under his knees. He puts his face against Geno’s thigh and Geno puts his hand in Sidney’s hair and Sidney cries until he’s hollowed out.

  


#

  


Geno doesn’t retaliate, mostly because Sully threatens to bench him if he does and they can all tell he’d actually do it.

It takes seven games, but it turns out winning is the best retaliation of all.

  


#

  


The night after they fly home, Geno texts him **You home?**

Sidney’s heart jumps at the echo of the last time he got that same text.

This time he scrambles to get to the door, pulling it open to find Geno standing there in ripped jeans and a henley.

He had a lot of time to think after the concussion, a lot of time to remember laying on the ice and thinking breathe, breathe, and worrying that he might lose hockey, that he might lose _Geno_ , but then he remembered he couldn’t lose Geno if he didn’t even try to keep him in the first place.

He could lose him anyway, even if he kept hockey, even if he tried to keep him, the way he’s losing Flower, and things change, he knows, life goes on, it just takes him longer to accept it than other people.

He tangles his fingers in the unbuttoned vee of Geno’s shirt and yanks him forward, smashing their mouths together.

Geno gasps into his mouth, then laughs, then kisses back, kicking the door closed and pushing Sidney against the opposite wall next to the coat rack.

“Upstairs,” Sid gasps when they break apart.

Geno looks at him, and Sidney sees a hesitation in his eyes he’s never seen before.

“I’m sorry,” Sidney says, with feeling. “I’m sorry I did this. I was wrong.”

“Can’t take this back, Sid,” Geno says.

Sidney pulls him closer. “I don’t want to. I’m a fucking idiot, but not about you, not about your family, _my_ family. Not anymore.”

Geno shudders out a huge breath, crushes Sidney in his arms and kisses him, walking him, stumbling, backward through the living room to the stairs.

Geno lets his fingers drift under the hem of Sidney’s t-shirt as he walks him back up the stairs, slow. “Need you. Need you always, like this.”

Sidney raises his arms over his head, and Geno draws his shirt off, throwing it somewhere behind him. He pushes Sidney’s basketball shorts down, and Sidney steps out of them as he goes with no urging.

“On the bed,” Geno says when they reach it, “hands and knees,” and this time Sidney goes.

Sidney can hear rustling behind him as Geno strips, and he suddenly needs Geno on him, in him, and he rocks back a little.

There’s the sound of the bedside table, and Sidney anticipates the click of the lube cap, but instead there’s silence.

And then Geno’s mouth on his ass cheek, kissing it briefly, scraping his teeth over it.

Sidney jerks and Geno laughs softly, running his hand over the meat of it, digging his fingers in. “Yes?”

Sidney puts his face down into the pillows and tilts his ass up.

Finally, the click of the lube cap, and Geno pulls his asscheeks apart, running a lubed up finger over his asshole before pressing in, slow.

His body goes taut, then suddenly relaxes. _Yes._

Geno takes his time, fingers him open thoroughly, three fingers easily sunk to his knuckles as Sidney sweats and tries and fails to stop his body from rocking back against them.

Then they’re gone, and Sidney can hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper.

“Over,” Geno says, his voice cracking slightly, and he helps Sidney turn, parting Sidney’s thighs around his spread knees, and he kneels up to drag his cockhead across Sidney’s slick, stretched hole.

He does it again and again and Sidney’s hips jerk forward, needing to be filled.

Geno breaches him for second before pulling back and Sidney thrashes his head, bites his lip hard so he doesn’t speak, doesn’t beg.

He does it again, letting the head of his dick press in slow, holds himself there.

Sidney snaps for air, his body trying to bear down and shove forward all at the same time.

“ _Fuck me_ ,” Geno says, finally, short of breath, and Sidney opens his eyes, hadn’t realized he’d closed them.

Geno looks down between them and if Sidney could be embarrassed right now he’s sure he’d flush bright red, knowing what Geno is looking at, his fat cockhead holding Sidney open. But he only feel want and need, desperate for more.

“Fuck me,” he says again, in English, hiking Sidney’s thighs and hips up higher.

Sidney hooks his ankles around Geno’s thighs and tilts his hips up. He takes a breath and moves, screwing himself forward onto Geno’s dick.

He feels like he’s being split open and it’s still not enough.

He reaches back and grabs the headboard to give himself leverage and he shoves forward hard, Geno’s cock knocking the breath from him with every thrust, so deep Sidney think he can feel him in his throat.

“Yes, Sid,” Geno is saying, “Yes, fuck me, _come on_.”

The angle is brutal: Geno’s cockhead scrapes over Sidney’s prostate and it sends spikes of electricity through Sidney’s limbs each time, his hips stuttering, his hip flexors screaming as he screws forward as hard as he can until he can’t do anything more than rock himself frantically against him, his arms shaking as they press back against the headboard.

He’s making noises in the back of his throat, punched out of him, and he can feel his orgasm cresting. He tries to hold it off, slows his breath but Geno shakes his head.

“Let go, Sid. Like this, let go.”

Sidney does, shouting as he comes, his cock untouched, striping his belly and chest.

His legs are useless, uncoordinated as he tries to keep fucking himself on Geno’s cock, and Geno shushes him, running his hands over Sidney’s knees, and under his thighs, folding his quads back against his ribs.

“I have,” he says hoarsely. “I have you.”

Sidney tilts his head back, let’s everything go as Geno fucks him, slow at first in the new position, then faster, harder, and Sidney scrabbles his hands at Geno’s shoulders, pulling him down to kiss him, sloppy and open-mouthed, until finally Geno shoves forward hard once, twice, and then shudders all over as he comes.

Geno shifts after a minute, pulls out carefully and stretches Sidney’s legs out on the bed.

Sidney closes his eyes for a moment, blinks them open when he feels a warm cloth pressing between his cheeks, swiping over his belly and chest.

“Have you been trying to date me?” Sidney slurs suddenly, thinking of the coffees and the lunches and the sangria and Geno laughs.

“You finally notice?”

Finally? “It’s only been a month,” he says.

Geno barks out a laugh. “Been seven years, Sid.”

Oh. “Fucking idiot,” Sidney mumbles and Geno’s booming laugh wraps him up and settle into his bones.

“Sleep,” Geno says, running a hand over Sidney’s eyelids.

“Stay,” Sidney murmurs, feeling too good and too exposed to feel bad about asking and Geno makes a strange noise, something between a laugh and a sigh.

“Of course, Sid. Always.”

  


#

  


They win.

Then they fucking _win_.

  


#

  


Sidney leaves his feet when Haggy’s empty netter goes in, jumping into Haggy’s arms and laughing so hard he doesn’t realize until he slides into the face-off circle that the wetness on his face is tears.

Across the dot, Sissons looks at him then away and Sidney knows the look on Sissons’ face, grief and disbelief and anger and guilt all rolled into one and as the seconds count down Sidney concentrates on staying present, trying not to be bowled over with the collective emotions of his team and theirs and then the horn sounds and _they motherfucking won._

“Sid!” he hears and he turns just before Tanger barrels into him, and it’s so good to see him dressed and on the ice, all the scratches dressed and coming over the boards now, that Sidney’s breath hitches.

Tanger presses his face into Sidney’s neck, and then Flower is there and the two of them are openly weeping.

Across the ice, Sidney catches Geno’s eye — there’s blood running down his face from a busted nose and his hair is plastered to his head with sweat and his entire body looks exhausted but his smile is 1000 watts and Sidney is fucking head over heels stupid for him and he can’t believe there was ever a time he thought he could live without him.

Back in the room, after Sidney’s been soaked with at least ten bottles’ worth of champagne and beer, someone, Cully maybe, shouts, “87 gets the first drink!” and then Geno is hoisting it up, hip-height.

He looks at Sidney and smiles with this tongue caught between his teeth, a secret just between them.

Sidney holds Geno’s gaze as he lets his knees unlock, loving the look of dumb realization that spreads over Geno’s face.

Sidney goes to his knees and tilts his chin up.

Someone, Horny this time for sure, wolf whistles and the familiar “chug chug chug” starts up, so Geno obliges, tilting the Cup to Sidney’s mouth until Sidney is gasping through champagne.

Geno puts the Cup down and hauls Sidney to his feet, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. Then Kuni is there, and Flower and Tanger and across the room their wives are standing on a bench watching them, Anna and Vero both looking puffy around the eyes.

It’s all going to change, and soon. Later Sidney will go back to Geno’s room with both him and Anna and tomorrow he’ll sit next to Flower on the plane for the last time and then the day after that he’ll start to figure out what this all means, but he won’t have to do it alone.

But for now, it’s been a long year, and it’s been a hard year, and they fucking made it and for once, it honestly is enough.

  


#

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm a cliche, will I ever title anything not from a song? Spoiler: No.
> 
>  
> 
> **Love is All by The Tallest Man on Earth**
> 
>  
> 
> Well I walk upon the river like it's easier than land  
> Evil's in my pocket and your will is in my hand  
> Oh, your will is in my hand
> 
> And I'll throw it in the current that I stand upon so still  
> Love is all, from what I've heard, but my heart's learned to kill  
> Oh, mine has learned to kill
> 
> Oh, I said I could rise  
> From the harness of our goals  
> Here come the tears  
> But like always, I let them go  
> Just let them go


End file.
